White Privilege and Diognetus
One of the major problems that white male Christians like me face in the west is our inclination to embrace identities that become more important to us than our identity as followers of Jesus.
Jesus Christ challenges and eradicates this identity, which characterizes life in the old order, where privilege and power prevail, where superiority matters more than humility, where winning at all costs is more important than losing with integrity. Jesus came to make us a “new creation.” That is the fundamental identity of Christians. I am a “new creation,” and thus not primarily a white, male, middle-class, and American. I am called to surrender my privilege and power to Jesus Christ, repent of all its abuses, steward it for the sake of others, and recognize that it is all passing away.
I want to explore what the early Christian movement can teach us about how new identity in Christ can supplant the identities either assigned to us or usurped by us in the old order. In this early period Christians in large numbers resisted both accommodation to win Rome’s approval and isolation to preserve their own identity. They learned instead how to immerse themselves in the culture as a new kind of people representing a new kingdom, not of this world but certainly in this world, for this world, and over this world.
One early Christian document illustrates this peculiar identity of Christians. We know it as The So-Called Letter to Diognetus. Writing around the year 150, the unknown author addressed this letter to a certain Diognetus, a Roman official. In it he explains the peculiar identity of Christians.
On the one hand, the author notes that Christians seemed to live like everyone else, which included inhabiting the same social world as the Romans did. “For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or custom.” Christians did not wear “Christian” clothes or shop in “Christian” stores or speak a “Christian” language or build “Christian” houses of worship or work “Christian” jobs. Archeologists can find scant evidence of a Christian material presence in the ancient world, with the exception of religious texts (the New Testament) and a few works of art (mostly found in catacombs).
But Christianity had an impact all the same. Erecting no church buildings, Christians aimed to be “living stones,” as Peter put it (I Peter 2:5). Refusing to visit pagan temples and burn incense in worship, they hoped to emit the “aroma of Christ” (II Corinthians 2:15). Never once portraying images of their God (at least in this early period), as the Romans did, Christians strived to reflect the image of God by how they lived (I Peter 2:21). Christians formed an identity that transcended Roman categories. They shared much in common with the general population, yet they were different all the same. “They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land.”
In short, Christians were different, and that difference was noticeable to Romans, attracting some, especially non-elites, and repulsing others, mostly though not exclusively from the upper class. The Christian message was different, but so was the Christian way of life, the two in the end not being distinguishable. Both message and way of life confronted an ancient world deeply divided by gender, ethnicity, education, and social-economic inequality. The Christian movement challenged these inequalities, however subtly, and achieved at least modest success in crossing demographic, racial, ethnic, and economic boundaries. Primary identity in Christ began to transform secondary identities. Living under the law of love, the Christian movement tended to flatten the social order without destroying it. As the great historian Peter Brown asserts, “The Christian church, by contrast [to pagan Rome], was a variegated group. In that respect, it was not unlike a miniature version of the new empire. High and low, men and women met as equals because equally subject, now, to the overruling law of one God.”
The author of the letter to Diognetus argued that it was Jesus Christ who changed everything. He was the way to new life. He made the unrighteous righteous; he turned sinners into saints; he transformed the ungodly into his followers. “In his mercy, he took up the burden of our sins. He himself gave up his own Son as a ransom for us—the holy one for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal. For what else could cover our sins except his righteousness?” The sole duty of Christians was to look to Jesus and trust him as “Nurse, Father, Teacher, Counselor, Healer, Mind, Light, Honor, Glory, Might, Life . . .”
But Jesus Christ modeled a new way of life, too. Once finding life in him, Christians were called to live like him, and thus to imitate him. “And when you have acquired this knowledge, think with what joy you will be filled! Think how you will love him, who first loved you so! And when you love him, you will be an imitator of his goodness.” The author explained what such imitation would accomplish, too. Masters would turn into servants, the strong would care for the weak, the wealthy would honor the poor. Those in power would no longer behave as they had previously, for “it is not in this way that any man can imitate God, for such things are alien to his majesty.”
To the early Christians, Jesus himself set the standard. Jesus numbered women among his disciples; no traditional rabbi followed this practice. He healed lepers, then considered unclean and cursed, embraced children, then treated as marginal and unimportant, and cared for the poor, then considered unworthy of mercy. He loved wayward sinners, as the story of the Prodigal Son illustrates so well. Christians tried to do the same. Another apologist writing in the 2nd century, Athenagoras, an Athenian, put it this way. “But among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves.”
The Christian movement had a transformative impact, though without ever trying to achieve such an impact directly, as if the primary goal of Christians was to reform Rome. Justin Martyr summed up the idealistic vision that animated the movement, especially as was embodied in the Christian way of life. The impact was simply Christians living as Christians. “. . . we who formerly delighted in fornication, but now embrace chastity alone; we who formerly used magical arts, dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another . . . now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies . . .”
Back once again to my own sense of identity. And perhaps yours, too. It is natural for me to do whatever I can to secure and protect power. That is how I tend to function in the old order. I can use—and often do use—my education, my position, my ethnicity, my maleness, my financial resources, my networks, and so much more to serve my own interests. This is who I am as a fallen person. But I am also a new creation in Christ. I don’t have to live that way anymore. I am free to live a new way. As the writer of this second-century letter argued, this new identity as a Christian undermines and transforms old identities.
We will consider implications next time.